BLACK AFRICAN STORY by Isaac Thomas

BLACK AFRICAN STORY – SYNOPSIS

AUTHOR – ISAAC THOMAS

The book discusses reasons for specifically Black Africa’s lagging behind in almost all aspects of human enterprise. This excludes Arab north Africa of Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Western Sahara but includes island nations that share Black culture and background. The book recognises that the subject of Africa’s perennial failures has been interrogated at numerous fora across the world and plenty of literature fill a legion of libraries and home shelves. Sadly, there exists no corresponding change in the situation on the ground. One definite point is that writing and discussions alone do not bring the intended results. It holds as the true position that Black Africa’s problems can only be truly identified and analysed for correction by delving into its immediate past, middle and prehistory; failure which all attempts will post a scrimp picture. This exercise should be done primarily by Black Africans chiefly the actual victims. Should any other party need to get involved it must be at a secondary tier. The West, UN, China, Japan cannot be in the driver’s seat of Africa’s development drive through FOCAC, TICAD, AGOA etc. Well, the situation on the ground says so.

It is mainly premised on Malawi and Zimbabwe as case studies. It also apportions culpability to both colonizers as well as Black Africans for allowing slavery and colonization to thrive and spread unabated. Had chiefs categorically rejected the idea by capturing and executing those whites who came with money to purchase slaves slavery would not have swallowed 30 million of our ancestors. The book also condemns aid as the major reason why Black African economies have suffered stagnancy. It propagates for responsibly statutorily halting aid inflows so that Africa can begin to use its intellect which is currently dormant because the “air’’ around Africa is that, “When they make it we will buy it - so why should we think”. It also outlines racial disparities mainly between Black people and white people while there appears to be mild racial tolerance among the rest of the races.

Chapter 13 laments Black Africa’s wretched and slow pace as it lags in shameful shadow of the powerful influence of other races chiefly whites and now China.

The book, in Chapter 14 considers Thomas Sankara as the true model of selfless leadership that Malawi and the rest of Black Africa needs and besides him there is no one else maybe Nelson Mandela but he falls a little short of Sankara. Sankara is Africa’s lost opportunity. It appreciates kudos for his contribution to Black Africa’s improvement of its quality of life because he spoke and lived his words and there were practical and tangible results that were obvious in his short presidency that was terminated by his lieutenant Blaise Compaore. While with Nelson Mandela despite trumpets uncountable in his favour there was massive unemployment, homelessness, high crime levels, poverty at the time he left office. In other words the book considers outcome based leadership.

Chapter 16 discusses China’s encroachment into African affairs so as to strategically position itself for future territorial domination of the continent. The regrettable thing is that the leadership is totally oblivious to that development which is the transposition of what took place during slavery and colonization. Our forefathers were lulled into believing that Europeans were good people who brought a religion of peace which also spreads love and tolerance until they realised they had lost title deeds to their land. The MO is strikingly identical. It proposes to end the clandestine China - Africa relationship at least at the high level that it is currently being peddled by China to a level of 50/50 mutual benefit.

The book offers practical solutions in the form of abandoning agriculture as the mainstay of the economy and instead pursuing new and high profit margin sectors of the economy such as manufacturing of vehicles, ship building etc. But all this demands an extra ordinarily extreme austerity like never heard of before. Suggestions are provided to kick start the new economic dispensation by constructing government assisted houses which shall offer an exemplary and guiding framework of what citizens should do going forward.    

Major references include Dead Aid by Dambisa Moyo which lambasts the concept of aid and demonstrates why it has achieved what it is not intended rather than otherwise; How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney which stresses how European dealings with Africa contributed to immense European growth at the expense of African development; Why Africa is Poor and what Africans can do about it by Greg Mills who underscores that African leadership and not European imperialism is Africa’s ghost of economic decay.

The book was published by AuthorHouse on 2 April 2019 with ISBN 978-1-7283-8171-8 and will be discussed at the University of Johannesburg Library on 1 October 2019.

Isaac Thomas is of Malawian origin who was born and raised in Zimbabwe. He pays his allegiance to Malawi. He is a Medical Laboratory Technologist with and a specialist in Haematology that he attained from the University of Zimbabwe in 1994. He made a career change to property after graduating with the Diploma in Valuation and Property Management in 2006 from the Harare Polytechnic. He also received a post graduate certificate in Property Management from Wits University in 2014. He currently practises at Paragon Facilities Management Company s a Property Manager in Centurion.

He is concerned about the lack of will on part of leadership and complacence on part of the general populace, a situation he believes he will be part in bringing to an end.